The Forever Ship

Zach shrugged impatiently. ‘Everything I’ve done has been for the protection of our people. You’re clinging to superstition, harping on about the taboo. Machines aren’t the real threat – the Omegas are.’

‘The taboo exists for a reason,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘The machines ended the world. They caused the Omegas.’

‘We can harness the machines to help us,’ Zach said. ‘Everything I’ve done – the machines, the tanks – it’s all to protect us from the burden of the Omegas.’

‘And the blast?’ I asked. ‘Are you really stupid enough to think that can be harnessed? That the blast will protect you as well?’

‘If need be,’ Zach said. ‘If that’s what it takes, against the threat of Elsewhere.’

‘You disgust me,’ I said, each word a hiss.

I could not look at him without thinking of the tanks. The blast. The stink of death that came off him, like a rabbit carcass claimed by flies.

‘Then at last you might begin to understand how I’ve always felt about you,’ he said.

I pulled back my fist and swung at him. It wasn’t an impulsive jab; I thought carefully about everything Zoe had taught me. I focused on his right cheekbone, and when I punched I made sure I punched through rather than at it, and I threw my whole weight behind the blow.

He saw me draw my fist back, but he didn’t believe I would really do it. When my knuckles connected with his face, his whole head snapped backwards. Mine did too, the jerk of pain sharp enough that my teeth clashed together as my head recoiled.

I was still staggering slightly as I tried to punch him again, but Piper held me back, his arm tight around my waist, lifting me off my feet. My knuckles were red, but the ache in them was nothing compared to the pain beneath my eye.

Zach had one hand pressed to his face, his other hand raised at me, palm first.

‘You’re insane,’ he said. ‘If you attack me, you’re attacking yourself.’

Piper released me, and I stood close to Zach.

‘You’re the mad one,’ I said. ‘You’re disgusting. You look down on us, think that we’re less than you. But the things that you’ve done—’ I spat at the ground beside him. ‘You’re a monster. A freak.’

He lowered his hand. The skin was already purpling, his eye clenched shut against the hurt.

‘It doesn’t matter what you think of me,’ he said. ‘I’m not here to win you over. It doesn’t make any difference that you hate me.’ He had regained control of his breath now. His voice was measured, his gaze cool. ‘If you don’t take me in, I’m dead. You too. Do you want that?’ He paused. ‘You want it all to be over?’

If he’d asked me that question a few months ago, my answer might have been different. They had been the bleak days, when I’d wandered through the world like a half-dead thing, lost without Kip. But I had found my way back. I had found Kip’s body and set it free, and I had chosen to live. I knew that I would choose it again, now, even if it meant protecting Zach.

I kept my gaze on Zach as I spoke to Piper. ‘I want him shackled, and locked up,’ I said.

The Ringmaster called for the shackles. When his soldiers brought them, I helped Piper with the chain myself, looping it tight around both Zach’s wrists. When my skin touched his, I forced myself not to flinch.

*

Piper sent for Sally. I heard him explaining Zach’s arrival in the corridor. I couldn’t make out her words, but her tone was clear enough. When she came in she looked at Zach, and it was as though winter had come again, settling over her features.

‘I should see to his face,’ she said, her voice cold. ‘If he gets an infection, it’s bad news for Cass.’

His injuries didn’t look dangerous – I’d seen far worse – but he’d taken a beating. Sally pushed him into a chair and stood over him. The tenderness with which I’d seen her care for Xander was completely absent in the way she examined Zach’s face. She touched him only with the tip of her thumb and forefinger, pinching under his chin, pulling his head first one way and then the other to inspect the cuts on his temple and lip. She called for water and cloths, swiping firmly at the swollen flesh until the cloth was a rusted red. ‘Hold this on,’ she said to him, pressing another cloth onto the graze above his eye. Fishing a miniature bone-handled dagger from her boot, she leaned over Zach – he flinched – to flick out gravel embedded in the wound, using the very tip of the knife.

Zach gave a small grunt of pain.

‘You want something to complain about?’ Sally said, keeping her voice low and pressing the knife against the open wound. It was a tiny blade – the same one she used for chopping tobacco, and getting splinters from Xander’s knees. But in Zach’s grated flesh, it was big enough. He winced his eyes shut, and I jerked my head away from my own jab of raw-flesh pain.

‘Get this mad old bitch off me,’ grunted Zach, raising his bound arms to swipe at her.

‘Sally,’ Piper said, his hand on her arm. But she’d already stopped, turning away from Zach.

‘I’m done,’ she said, wiping the tip of the blade and slipping the dagger back into her boot. I watched her, and envied her those words: I’m done. When would I be done with Zach?

The Ringmaster stepped closer to Zach, peering at his face. Sally had cleaned the skin around his wounds, but the rest of his face was still smeared with grime.

‘How far you’ve come,’ The Ringmaster said quietly.

‘Not only me,’ said Zach. ‘You too. It’s a long way from the Council rooms at Wyndham. All those pretty serving girls. Yet here we both are.’

‘There’s a difference between us,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘I had a choice. I came here because I chose to – because I wanted to stand against you and The General, and your obsession with the machines. But you have no choice. You’re here because you need help.’ He gestured around at the rest of us, and the guards at the door. ‘Without their protection – my protection – you’re dead.’

Zach leaned forward, holding out his shackled arms towards The Ringmaster. ‘I might be in chains,’ he said, ‘but we’re both here because we have no choice. The only difference is that I’ve been honest about it. You wouldn’t be here, helping them, if you didn’t need them just as much as I do. You’ve never given something for nothing. Not ever. You’ve been trying to make out that you’re here as the saviour of the Omegas? Here to help the oppressed?’ Zach laughed, a hollow sound, like the clanking of his chains. ‘You’re only here because you were getting sidelined at the Council. You saw that The General and I were gaining power, and that you were being left behind because you refused to be reasonable about the potential of the machines.’ Zach sat back, his chained arms crossed over his chest. ‘You didn’t leave the Council to help the Omegas,’ he said to The Ringmaster. ‘You left because you figured you could capitalise on their uprising as your best chance at overthrowing us, taking back the power for yourself.’

None of us came to The Ringmaster’s defence. Zach was only saying what we’d all thought, at times. What we’d all feared.

For a few seconds nobody spoke. Piper’s eyes narrowed as he surveyed Zach; beside me, The Ringmaster was standing stiffly, and I could hear the careful evenness of his breath. Honest, Zach had said. How many of us, in this room, were really being honest with one another?

‘Take him to the storage room out the back,’ The Ringmaster said. ‘I want Simon at the door. Two of my men too.’

It didn’t escape me that he chose Simon first. When I’d first met The Ringmaster, a few months earlier, he never would have trusted an Omega, let alone valued his skills. But whatever else The Ringmaster might have been, he wasn’t stupid. He’d seen Simon fighting in the battle for New Hobart, and in the sparring ring where the soldiers trained. It wasn’t only his three arms that made him a valuable fighter: Simon was fast, experienced, and strong. In the battle, I’d seen him stand, legs planted wide, hefting his swords as though he were the only solid thing in a flimsy world.

Piper nodded, grabbing Zach roughly by the elbow.

‘And when he’s locked up, send for Zoe from Elsa’s,’ I said. Piper hesitated for a moment before he nodded. We both knew that when I said Zoe, I meant Zoe and Paloma. I hated the thought of bringing Paloma into the same building as Zach – but Paloma needed to be part of this discussion.

In the doorway, Zach turned back.

‘I will remember every detail of how you treat me,’ he said.

‘You’re not the only one with a memory,’ I said. I stared at him, and I wondered if I would ever be able to remember swimming with him in the river as children, without remembering the sodden bodies of the drowned children from the tanks. I remembered how the two of us used to clamber up the trees above the riverbank, and all I could think of was Leonard’s distended neck as he hung from the tree.

‘Take him away,’ I said.

*

Zoe threw the door open so hard that it bounced back off the wall, almost hitting Paloma as she followed Zoe through.

‘He has the hide to come to us?’ she spat. ‘After what he’s done? And we’re supposed to protect him now?’

‘No,’ Piper said. ‘We’re not protecting him. We’re protecting Cass.’

‘He’s using us,’ Zoe said.

The Ringmaster exhaled. ‘Probably. He’s always operated that way. But I don’t see that we have any choice.’

Zoe turned to me. ‘How do you even know he’s telling the truth about The General turning on him?’

‘He’s telling the truth,’ I said. It wasn’t that I trusted him. It wasn’t even the cuts and bruises on his face that convinced me. It was my certainty that he would never come to me unless he had no choice.

The Ringmaster spoke up. ‘It was always a matter of when The General would turn on him, not if. You don’t know The General like I do.’ He paused, then continued slowly, each word slithering through gritted teeth. ‘She’s not somebody who likes to share.’ I remembered how casually The General had told us about her capture and torture of the crew of one of our ships.

The Ringmaster went on. ‘But it doesn’t follow that Zach will be safe here, with us. If we keep him here, our own soldiers might kill him. Every soldier in this town, Alpha or Omega, would kill him with pleasure.’

‘If that was true,’ I said, ‘they’d have killed me, months ago.’

‘Do you think we haven’t been protecting you?’ Piper said. He threw the words out as though it were just an ordinary observation, but it knocked the air from my lungs.He went on. ‘I always have guards that I trusted watching the holding house. Zoe and I have been with you ourselves whenever we could.’

Months ago, on the island, one of Piper’s own advisers had tried to kill me, to take out Zach. I’d thought, since then, that I’d proved my worth to the resistance. And I’d believed that Piper’s watchfulness was because of The Ringmaster. I hadn’t realised that he still believed I was at risk from our own soldiers, our own people.

Piper spoke gently. ‘It was only a precaution,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think they’d kill you directly – they’ve seen you fight for us, and they know what you’ve done for the resistance. You helped us evacuate the island, and free this town. I think our people understand that we need you, even if that means that Zach lives.’ He cast a glance at the door through which Zach had been taken. ‘But if Zach’s here with us, it’s a provocation. If they caught him on his own, with that sneer on his face, it would be easier for them to see you as collateral damage. At best, they’ll rough him up, hurt him badly enough that it’ll hurt you too. At worst, they’ll finish him off, and you with him.’

‘We can’t keep him with us, though,’ shouted Zoe. ‘I won’t do it.’

‘This isn’t about you,’ snapped Piper. ‘You think I wouldn’t like to give him a beating myself?’ Piper’s voice was rigid, but then it softened. ‘Hell on earth, Zoe. I was next to you when we pulled those kids out of the tanks. And you weren’t even on the island – you didn’t have to see what I saw there. The Confessor executing my soldiers, one after another – all on Zach’s orders. Stop acting like you’re the only one who hates him.’

‘If we don’t take him in, they’ll kill him?’ Paloma said. She’d been standing silently to the side while we argued. Now she spoke up. ‘Kill him, and Cass too?’ she went on.

The Ringmaster gave a quick nod.

‘Then we keep him,’ Paloma said. She made it sound as if it were simple: the only choice.

Zoe’s face twisted in disgust. ‘He’ll be spying on us. Manipulating us. And he’ll find out about Paloma—’

‘We need Cass,’ Paloma interrupted her. I was surprised to hear her put it like that. I’d seen how she watched me when I had a vision. How she’d avoided being close to me, since she’d first understood that I had seen Elsewhere burn.

‘It’s not that simple,’ I said, but I was grateful nonetheless for the certainty in her voice.

‘Don’t patronise me,’ she said. ‘I hate your visions, hate that you’ve seen my home burn, my people massacred.’ She choked a little on those words, and pressed her lips tightly together before she could continue. ‘But I believe you. It’s coming. And you’re the one who’s warned us. You know more than anyone about the blast. We can’t save the Scattered Islands without you.’

We were all watching her. She stood very straight, arms wrapped around herself, waiting there in the middle of us all for a response.

‘We keep him here,’ Piper said.

‘Under guard,’ The Ringmaster added. ‘And away from Paloma.’

Zoe was about to speak again, but she looked at Paloma, and then said nothing.

So he stayed. I thought I might feel relieved – it was true, after all, that we would both be killed if the others hadn’t agreed to take him in. But an unease had settled in my guts. Zach had come to us, bruised, desperate and alone, and still we had no option but to do what he demanded.

CHAPTER 5

The next morning, when I woke, I lay silently for a few minutes. I stretched, feet jammed against the bars that made up the foot of the bed, trying to forestall the moment of getting up and facing the day, which meant facing Zach.

Piper had slipped away the night before, while the rest of us were eating in the kitchen. When he’d come back it was nearly midnight, Paloma rolling over with a half-asleep grunt as the door clattered shut and he strode to his bed. I didn’t need to ask him where he’d been – I could tell that he’d been talking to Zach. I could see it clearly enough in the way he kicked his boots off and halfway across the room, and in the way he shoved and punched his pillow into shape beneath his head. Now, even though it was barely dawn, Piper was already awake and out in the courtyard with Sally, the two of them talking in low voices.

Zoe and Paloma were awake too, talking by the dormitory window. Paloma was nodding at something Zoe was saying. She was wearing Zoe’s shirt, too large for her, the sleeves rolled and bunched over her pale arms. I left the two of them alone.

I found Elsa in the kitchen. While she busied herself with sifting weevils from the flour, I stirred the porridge. The pot held only a dusty handful of oats, thickened with water until it was more like paste than porridge.

‘Been like this ever since the last weeks of winter,’ Elsa said, seeing me grimace at the grey mixture. ‘The grain stores are nearly empty. Half the farms around here weren’t even planted last season. The Council only maintained a handful of the fields – enough for the troops stationed here.’

The Council hadn’t planted the farms, because they’d thought that by the time the wheat was shoulder-high and ready for harvest, the thousands of Omegas who lived in New Hobart would be tanked, just as the children had been.

‘Even now,’ she went on, ‘some of the farmers are reluctant to work their smallholdings outside the wall. A lot of them have packed up and left.’

I couldn’t blame them. The area surrounding New Hobart clung to a semblance of normality, but it was hard not to feel as though the town occupied a pause between battles.

I was still hungry after I finished my porridge, every last scrap of it; I scraped my spoon against the inside of the bowl until the clay squealed.

Walking up through the town to the Tithe Collector’s office, the four of us passed a patrol of The Ringmaster’s soldiers on their way down to the wall. A year before, if I’d passed them in the street and glanced at their faces, I’d have assumed they were Omegas. Each face had been forced to remember its skull, the bone outlines hard against the flesh. Not since the drought years, when I was a child, had I seen Alphas looking so gaunt.

When we reached the Tithe Collector’s office I looked closely at The Ringmaster. Even he had lost weight about the face, though his mass of curly hair disguised the worst of it.

I asked him about the rations.

‘I’ve secured the grain silos at Deadmeadow and Landfall. Most of the western plains are still held by garrisons loyal to me. The tithe takings, too.’

Piper’s lips tightened – that money had all been taken from Omegas, often at the lash of a whip.

But if The Ringmaster noticed, he paid no heed. ‘The problem is getting it here,’ he continued. ‘The Council’s holding Wreckers’ Pass – the convoys from my garrisons can’t get through any other way without getting dangerously close to Wyndham. The General’s soldiers have picked off two convoys of grain in the last month, and one of weapons. As long as The Council holds the pass, and the plains around Wyndham, we’re going to struggle to feed all the troops, let alone the townsfolk.’ He added, with a glance at the guards by the door, ‘My soldiers aren’t used to such short rations.’

‘Our troops have worked on less than this for years,’ sniped Zoe.

‘That doesn’t make any difference,’ said Piper. ‘We need to do better, for all of them. We’re asking them to take on the Council, in open battle, when The General attacks – and she will, eventually. We can’t defend New Hobart with disgruntled troops. Forget about principles or loyalty – nothing breeds mutiny like a hungry army.’

‘And what about new recruits?’ I said. ‘Have there been more, as the news of the refuges spreads?’

For generations the refuges had been the last resort of the Omegas: places where they would be fed and housed by the Council in exchange for their labour. Though they’d always been little more than prison camps, they were supposed to be the last safety net of a Council that could never endanger Alphas by allowing Omegas to starve. In recent years, under Zach and The General’s rule, they had become something more sinister: places where desperate Omegas in their thousands turned themselves in, only to be tanked, permanently preserved to protect their Alpha counterparts.

‘You can’t be the only one who’s decided not to stand for the Council breaking the taboo,’ I added.

The Ringmaster shrugged. ‘The news of the refuges is spreading – that song you started did its job, I’ll give you that, and Omegas have been trickling in, though many are reluctant to come into a town that I’m holding. As for the Alphas – most of them don’t believe the rumours about the tanks. And even for those who do, it’s a question of what they fear most: the machines, or the Omegas and the fatal bond. Of how far they’d be willing to go to be free of their twins.’

This was the same question I asked myself about him, every day. Every time he spoke of twins, I couldn’t help thinking of his own twin, locked away somewhere.

‘They fear The General, too,’ he went on. ‘And rightly. It’s one thing for them to want the taboo upheld. Another for them to be willing to oppose her.’

‘It would be different if they actually saw the tanks,’ I said. I could never forget what I’d seen in there. The melding of tubes and flesh; the heavy silence of the floating bodies. ‘Hearing the rumours is different from having to see the reality. Except for the soldiers actually working in the refuges, the Alphas never have to see the tanks. They never have to confront what’s actually being done in their name.’

‘Your brother and The General know that well enough – their plans depend on it,’ The Ringmaster said, a little impatiently. ‘Anyway, while they hold Wreckers’ Pass, we couldn’t feed more recruits, even if they were pouring in the gates.’

Piper must have seen how my shoulders slumped.

‘It’s not all bad news,’ he said. I raised an eyebrow. ‘If The General’s concentrating on starving us out, then they might not be planning a major counterattack. Not yet, anyway.’

How long did we have, I wondered, before the Council found out about Paloma, and about Zach? If The General knew that we were sheltering both of them here, would she crush New Hobart? And would The Ringmaster and his troops be enough to defend us, if the Council turned its whole force against us? Would he even try?

*

The Ringmaster was the first person to comment aloud on Paloma and Zoe, the day after Zach’s arrival. It was late afternoon; Paloma and Zoe were on the far side of the main hall in the Tithe Collector’s office, talking with Simon and Piper. As Paloma walked behind Zoe, she let her hand trail briefly across the back of Zoe’s neck.

The Ringmaster spoke so that only I could hear. ‘Of all the people she could have chosen,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Because Zoe’s a woman?’ I shot back.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. ‘Because Zoe’s as spiky as a blackthorn shrub.’ He gave me a conspiratorial look.

I didn’t return it. I didn’t want to discuss Paloma and Zoe – least of all with him. So much of our lives was already under his control; I didn’t want to have him sullying this as well.

‘Paloma’s our only emissary from Elsewhere,’ The Ringmaster went on. ‘I might not be as keen as the rest of you to join ourselves to them, but I’m not fool enough to think we should risk alienating them. Paloma’s goodwill is no small thing. The last thing we need is to have a lovers’ quarrel jeopardise our only contact with them.’

‘There haven’t been any quarrels,’ I said. Zoe was as prickly as ever with the rest of us, but around Paloma she had a new calmness. Across the room, Paloma was standing in front of Zoe, and Zoe had tucked her chin to cup the top of Paloma’s head.

The Ringmaster was staring too.

‘The soldiers are already asking about Paloma,’ he said. ‘They’re not blind, or stupid. They know she’s not from here – they’re asking where she’s from and why she’s here. What it means for the future.’

‘You know what it means,’ I said. ‘You can’t expect us to ignore what we’ve learned. If we can save Elsewhere, we’ll be able to end the twinning. Look at Paloma.’

‘I have,’ he said coolly. I followed his gaze. With Zoe standing close behind her, Paloma’s false leg was barely visible, a few shades darker than the rest of her flesh.

‘She’s free of the twinning,’ I said. ‘They all are, over there.’

‘And they’re all mutants,’ he said. ‘You’re asking us to make a huge sacrifice.’

I noticed that he still spoke of the Alphas as us.

‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re asking you to take your fair share. We’ve carried the burden, for centuries. Not just the infertility, but everything else too. We’ve done it alone, while you’ve lived comfortably in your intact bodies.’

‘Do you realise what you’re asking? You’re asking us to give that up.’

‘It must be nice,’ I said, ‘to be so convinced of your own perfection.’

His nostrils flared slightly. ‘Easy for you Omegas to claim the moral high ground. You’re not the ones who’ll be taking this medicine. You want us to risk everything by taking a taboo medicine that you don’t even understand.’

He was right: I didn’t understand how it worked. Even Paloma didn’t know the details of that. The only proof I had was Paloma, and a handful of documents from the Ark. And The Ringmaster was right, too, that it wouldn’t be the Omegas taking the medicine. The treatment was for the next generation, so it would be wasted on us, since the one mutation that all Omegas shared was our infertility.